Here’s a summary of my favorite presentation at TechWeek - I am the Place: Delivering Information to a Mobile Society by Alice Toth, Director of Interaction Design at ARC Worldwide.
Up until ten or so years ago, information was largely tied to place (e.g. you went a theater to watch a movie). But with the advent of mobile and wifi technologies, information is no longer tied to place. Now, the user is the place.
And that user expects more, too. Not only does she want what she wants when she wants it, but it’s up to you to figure it all out beforehand. Take restaurants, for example. When a user is researching a restaurant at a desktop, she’s looking at menus and photos. When she’s out and about with her smart phone, she wants directions and reservations.
So it’s not enough to consider how a user will interact with a product. You must also consider when and where that interaction will take place. And the more research you can conduct into the matter, the better. Detailed user experience profiles must be created and analyzed, along with demographic and psychographic data.
Surprisingly enough, what you may find is that the solution you had in mind may not be the best solution for the job. Rather than creating an app to deliver the goods, you may conclude that text messages are a better way to go.
I know. You were really looking forward to designing that app, weren’t you?
